W. H. R. Rivers
William Halse Rivers Rivers M.D.(Lond.), F.R.C.P.(Lond.), F.R.S., Medical Officer, Craiglockhart War Hospital (March 12, 1864 - 4 June, 1922) was an English anthropologist, neurologist, ethnologist and psychiatrist, best known for his work with shell-shocked soldiers during World War I. Rivers' most famous patient was the poet Siegfried Sassoon. He is also famous for his participation in the Torres Straits expedition of 1898, and his consequent seminal work on the subject of kinship. Biography Pre-War Rivers was born in 1864 in Luton, near Chatham, Kent, son of Elizabeth Hunt and Henry Fredrick Rivers, an Anglican priest and speech therapist who treated Lewis Carroll among others. The oldest of four children (siblings were Charles Hay Rivers, born in 1865, Ethel Marion Rivers, born in 1867 and Katharine Elizabeth Rivers, born in 1871) William (or 'Willie' as he was called throughout his childhood) took his name from his uncle 'William Rivers' who, according to family tradition, had been the man who shot the man who had fatally wounded Lord Nelson. It is unclear where the 'Halse' part of his name originated but it is probable that the second 'Rivers' entered his name as a result of a clerical error. Rivers suffered from a stammer that never truly left him, he also had no visual memory but these things did not seem to affect his academic performance. Educated at Tonbridge School, he was set to take his University of Cambridge entrance exam when he was struck down by typhoid fever and missed a year of school. Instead of Cambridge, Rivers studied medicine at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, later developing an interest in psychology. He graduated aged just 22, the youngest person to do so until recent times. After qualifying, Rivers sought to join the Royal Army Medical Corps but was barred due to ill health. Instead, his love of travelling lead him to serve several terms as a ship's surgeon. On one voyage, he spent a month in the company of George Bernard Shaw “many hours every day talking - the greatest treat of my life”. Back in England, he accepted a post at St John's College]] at the University of Cambridge (where he was later elected a fellow) and joined the university's expedition to the Torres Straits in 1898, subsequently carrying out extensive study of kinship in Melanesia. Despite his love of adventure and his obvious intellect, Rivers was still an extremely shy young man at this point: (L.E Shaw, physiologist friend of Rivers and his neighbour at St. John's for many years). His experiences both at home and abroad increased his interests in the relationship between mind and body, and he played a fundamental role in the establishment of both experimental psychology and social anthropology as academic disciplines in Britain. In 1901 he was one of the founding members of the British Psychological Society. He was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1908 and won the Society's gold medal in 1914 (information obtained from Rivers fonds) In the early 1900s, Rivers' embarked on one of his most famous experiments, carried out with (and on) his close friend Dr Henry Head to study the regeneration of nerve tissue. Incisions were made into Head's arm by Rivers, severing a nerve, and the two men observed the return of sensation over a period of five years. Although Rivers was the investigator in this experiment, he was survived by Head who came to publish their work and is, therefore, given a great deal of the credit that is, perhaps, due to Rivers. Rivers was to work closely with Henry again during the latter part of the war when he was appointed psychologist to the Royal Flying Corps, attached to the Central Hospital in Hampstead. In 1904, with Professor James Ward and some others, Rivers founded the British Journal of Psychology of which he was at first joint editor. From 1908 till the outbreak of the late war Dr. Rivers was mainly preoccupied with ethnological and sociological problems. Already he had relinquished his official post as Lecturer in Experimental Psychology in favour of Dr. Charles Samuel Myers, and now held only a lectureship on the physiology of the special senses. By degrees he became more absorbed in anthropological research. But though he was now ethnologist rather than psychologist he always maintained that what was of value in his work was due directly to his training in the psychological laboratory. In the laboratory he had learnt the importance of exact method; in the field he now gained vigor and vitality by his constant contact with the actual daily behaviour of human beings. In 1908 Rivers made his first journey to Melanesia. The material and interests which the voyage gave him occupied practically the whole of his attention until 1914, when his great work entitled "A History of Melanesian Society" was published. In that year he made a second journey to Melanesia, returning to England in March 1915, to find that war had broken out. Beginnings of psychological career After his period as ships surgeon, back in England, Rivers gained the distinction of an M.D. (London) and was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. Soon after, he became house surgeon at the Chichester Infirmary (1887–9) and, although he enjoyed the town and the company of his colleagues, an appointment at Bart's and the opportunity to return to the company of productive researchers in medicine proved too much to resist. He became house physician at St Bartholomew's in 1889 and remained there until 1890. At Bart's, Rivers had been a physician to Dr. Samuel Gee. Those under Gee were conscious of his indifference towards, if not actual dislike of, the psychological aspects of medicine. As Walter Langdon-Brown surmises, it may have been a reaction against this which led Rivers and his fellow Charles S. Myers to devote themselves to these aspects. Whatever his motivation, the fact that Rivers's interests lay in neurology and psychology became evident in this period. Reports and papers given by Rivers at the Abernethian Society of St. Bart's indicate a growing specialism in these fields: Delirium and its allied conditions (1889), Hysteria (1891) and Neurasthenia (1893). Following the direction of his passion for the workings of the mind as it correlates with the workings of the body, in 1891 Rivers became house physician at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic. It was here that he and Henry Head were to meet and form a lasting friendship. Rivers's interest in the physiology of the nervous system and in "the mind" that is, in sensory phenomena and mental states, was further stimulated by work in 1891, when he was chosen to be one of Victor Horsley's assistants at in the series of investigations which elucidated the existence and nature of electrical currents in the mammalian brain which took place at University College, London. That he was seconded to Horsley for the work is an indication of his growing reputation as a researcher. ]] In the same year, Rivers joined the Neurological Society of London and presented A Case of Treadler's Cramp to a meeting of the society. The case serves today as a poignant reminder of the cost, to millions of lives, of Britain's industrial supremacy. Resigning from the National Hospital in 1892, Rivers travelled to Jena to expand his knowledge of experimental psychology. Whilst in Jena, Rivers became fluent in German and attended lectures, not only on psychology but on philosophy as well. He also became deeply immersed in the culture; in a diary he kept of the journey he comments on the buildings, the picture galleries, the church services, and the education system, showing his wide interests and critical judgement. In this diary he also wrote that: "I have during the last three weeks come to the conclusion that I should go in for insanity when I return to England and work as much as possible at psychology." And "go in for insanity" he did, becoming a Clinical Assistant at the Bethlem Royal Hospital upon his return to England. In 1893, at the request of G.H Savage, he began assisting with lectures in mental diseases at Guy's Hospital, laying special stress on their psychological aspect. At about the same time, due to the bidding of Professor Sully, he began to lecture on experimental psychology at University College, London.From C.S Myers' Presidential Address to the Psychology Section of the British Association in 1922. The address is included in Rivers's posthumously published Psychology and Politics (1923) When, in 1893, the unexpected invitation came to lecture in Cambridge on the functions of the sense organs, he was already deeply read in the subject. He had been captivated by Head's accounts of the works of Ewald Hering and had absorbed his views on colour vision and the nature of vital processes in living matter with avidity. However, with typical thoroughness he prepared himself for his new duties by spending the summer working in Heidelberg with Emil Kraepelin on measuring the effects of fatigue. While it may have come as a surprise to Rivers, the offer of a Cambridge lectureship had come about as part of a long process of evolution within the University's Natural Science Tripos. Earlier in 1893, Professor McKendrick, of Glasgow, had examined subject and reported unfavourably on the scant knowledge of the special senses displayed by the candidates; it was in reaction to this that Sir Michael Foster, who had seen the potential in this shy, retiring Bart's man, appointed Rivers as a lecturer and he became Fellow Commoner at St John's College forthwith.A "Fellow Commoner" is a student, or, in this case, lecturer, at the University of Cambridge who is given the right to "common", or dine, at the Fellow's table He was to become a Fellow of the College in 1902. At first, the appointment proved to be an arduous and exhausting one for Rivers who, at this point, still had ongoing teaching commitments at Guy's hospital and at University College. In addition to these mounting responsibilities, in1897 he was put in temporary charge of the new psychological laboratory at University College. This was the same year in which Foster assigned him a room in the Physiology Department at Cambridge for use in psychological research. As a result, Rivers is listed in the histories of experimental psychology as simultaneously the director of the first two psychological laboratories in Britain. In retrospect, it is easy to see the monumental nature of Foster's appointment in lieu of the profound effects Rivers's work would have on Cambridge and indeed in the scientific world in general. However, at the time the Cambridge University Senate were wary of his appointment. As Bartlett writes: "how many times have I heard Rivers, spectacles waving in the air, his face lit by his transforming smile, tell how, in Senatorial discussion, an ancient orator described him as a 'Ridiculous Superfluity'!" The opposition of the Senate, while it was more vocal than serious, was distinctly detrimental to Rivers's efforts since any assistance to his work was very sparingly granted. It was not until 1901, eight years after his appointment, that he was allowed the use of a small cottage for the laboratory, and given thirty-five pounds annually (later, and somewhat begrudgingly, increased to fifty) for purchase and upkeep of equipment. For several years Rivers continued thus, and then, stimulated by him and others, the Moral Science Board stretched out a rather timid and tentative hand again and, in 1903, Rivers and his assistants and students moved to another small building in St Tibbs Row. These working spaces were characterised as being "dismal", "damp, dark and ill-ventilated" but these poor working conditions did not seem to dishearten the Cambridge psychologists. Indeed, the effect was quite the contrary, psychology began to thrive: "perhaps, in the early days of scientific progress, a subject often grows all the more surely if its workers have to meet difficulties, improvise their apparatus, and rub very close shoulders one with another." It was not until 1912 that a well-equipped laboratory was built under the directorship of Charles S. Myers, one of Rivers's earliest and ablest pupils, who was wealthy and able to supplement the University grant with his own funds. ]] At this point the preoccupations of the Cambridge psychologists and of Rivers were with the special senses: colour vision, optical illusions, sound-reactions and perceptual processes. In these fields, Rivers was rapidly becoming eminent. He was invited to write a chapter on vision for Schäfer's Handbook of Physiology and this contribution, according to Bartlett, "still remains, from a psychological point of view, one of the best in the English Language". In it he set out in a masterly way the work of previous investigators, modestly incorporating his own, and critically examining the rival theories of colour vision, pointing out clearly the importance of psychological factors in, for instance, the phenomena of contrast. For his own experiments on vision, Rivers worked with two of his graduate medical students, Charles S. Myers and William McDougall who assisted him at this period in a series of experiments on vision and with whom he formed close friendships. Rivers also collaborated with the pioneer instrument maker Sir Horace Darwin in the improvement of apparatus for recording sensations, especially those involved in vision. This collaboration was the basis of a lifelong friendship between Rivers and the genial son of Charles Darwin. Another important work of this period was an investigation of the influence of tea, coffee, alcohol, tobacco, and a number of other drugs on the capacity for doing work both muscular and mental. For this research he was well fitted after his work under Kraepelin at Heidelberg. A great many of these experiments Rivers made on himself, and for this purpose gave up for a period of two years not only alcoholic beverages and tobacco, which was easy enough for him as he liked neither, but all tea, coffee and cocoa as well. Although the investigation was initially formed with physiological motives in mind, it soon became clear that a strong psychological influence was also involved in the act of taking the substances. Rivers realised that part of the effects- mental and physical- that substances had were caused psychologically by the excitement of knowing that one is indulging. In order, therefore, to eliminate "all possible effects of suggestion, sensory stimulation and interest", Rivers made sure that the substances were disguised from him so that he was not aware, on any given occasion, whether he was taking a drug or a control substance.Owing to the distinctive taste of alcohol, it was necessary for the control mixture to be able to disguise the taste. The mixture used was one containing capsicum, cardamoms, chloroform and peppermint This was the first experiment of its kind to use this double-blind procedure and, in recognition of this momentous study, Rivers was appointed Croonian Lecturer to the Royal College of Physicians in 1906. In December 1897 Rivers's achievements were recognised by the University of Cambridge who honoured him with the degree of M.A. honoris causa and, in 1904 with the assistance of Professor James Ward, Rivers made a further mark on the world of psychological sciences, founding and subsequently editing the British Journal of Psychology. Despite his many successes, Rivers was still a markedly reticent man in mixed company, hampered as he was by his stammer and innate shyness. In 1897, Langdon-Brown invited Rivers to come and address the Abernethian Society. The occasion was not an unqualified success. He chose "Fatigue" as his subject, and before he had finished his title was writ large on the faces of his audience. In the Cambridge physiological laboratory too he had to lecture to a large elementary class. He was rather nervous about it, and did not like it, his hesitation of speech made his style dry and he had not yet acquired the art of expressing his original ideas in an attractive form, except in private conversation. Among two or three friends, however, the picture of Rivers is quite different. His conversations were full of interest and illumination; "he was always out to elicit the truth, entirely sincere, and disdainful of mere dialect." His insistence on veracity made him a formidable researcher, as Haddon puts it, "the keynote of Rivers was thoroughness. Keenness of thought and precision marked all his work." His research was distinguished by a fidelity to the demands of experimental method very rare in the realms which he was exploring and, although often overlooked, the work that Rivers did in this early period is of immense import as it formed the foundation of all that came later. World War One During the war, he worked as a RAMC captain at Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh, where he applied techniques of psychoanalysis to British officers suffering from various forms of neurosis brought on by their war experiences. Rivers' methods are often, somewhat unfairly, said to have stemmed from Sigmund Freud however, this is not truly the case. Although he was aware of Freud's theories and methods, he did not necessarily prescribe to them. While he 'admitted', as Myers describes, 'the conflict of social factors with the sexual instincts in certain psychoneuroses' of civilian life, he saw the instinct of self-preservation, and not the sexual instinct, as the driving force behind war neuroses. He, therefore, formed his 'talking cure' not on the basis that soldiers were repressing sexual urges but rather their feelings of fear pertaining to their war experiences. As such, he really is a pioneer in his field- both for his new methods and for the fact that he went against the grain of the beliefs of the time (Shell-Shock wasn't considered a 'real' illness and 'cures' mainly involved electric shocks) and against the grain of the society he too had been brought up in- he didn't advocate the usual 'stiff upper-lip' approach but rather told his patients to express their emotions. Sassoon came to him in 1917 after publicly protesting against the war and refusing to return to his regiment, but was treated with sympathy and given much leeway until he voluntarily returned to France. For Rivers, there was a considerable dilemma involved in "curing" his patients simply in order that they could be sent back to the Western Front to die. As Sassoon wrote: He did not wish to 'break' his patients but at the same time he knew that it was their duty to return to the front and his duty to send them. There is also an implication (given the pun on Rivers' name along with other factors) that Rivers was more to Sassoon that just a friend and, as he called him, 'father confessor', a point that Jean Moorcroft Wilson picks up on in her biography of Sassoon, however Rivers' tight morals would have probably prevented such a relationship from progressing: Not only Sassoon, but his patients as a whole, loved him and his colleague Frederic Bartlett wrote of him Rivers published the results of his experimental treatment of patients at Craiglockhart in a The Lancet paper 'On the Repression of War Experience' }} and began to record interesting cases in his book 'Conflict and Dream' which was published a year after his death by his close friend Grafton Elliot Smith , ISBN 1417980192 }}. Post War After the war, Rivers became "another and far happier man- diffidence gave place to confidence, reticence to outspokenness, a somewhat laboured literary style to one remarkable for ease and charm" (Myers 1922). He is quoted as saying In those post war years, his personality seemed to change dramatically. The man who had been most at home in his study, the laboratory, or the field now dined out a good deal, had joined clubs, went yachting and appeared to welcome rather than shun opportunities for public speaking. Always having been a voracious reader, he now began reading in philosophy, as he had not done for some years, and also in imaginative literature. Not all of his friends from former years welcomed these changes; some felt that, along with his shyness, his scientific caution and good sense may have deserted him to a degree but most people who saw how happy Rivers had become agreed that the slight alterations to his character were for the better. Rivers had visited his college frequently during the war although, having resigned his position as lecturer, he held no official post. However, upon his return from the Royal Flying Corps in 1919, the college created a new office for him- 'Praelector of Natural Science Studies'- and he was given a free rein to do as he pleased. As Leonard E. Shore recalled in 1923: He took his new position to be a mandate to get to know every science student and indeed every other student at St. Johns and at other colleges. He would arrange 'At Homes' in his rooms on Sunday evenings, as well as Sunday morning breakfast meetings; he also organised informal discussions and formal lectures (many of which he gave himself) in the College Hall. He formed a group called The Socratics and brought to it some of his most influential friends, including H.G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, Bertrand Russell and Sassoon. Sassoon (Patient B in 'Conflict and Dream'), remained particularly friendly with Rivers and regarded him as a mentor. They shared Socialist sympathies. Having already been made president of the anthropological section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1911, after the war he became president of the Folk Law Society (1921), and the Royal Anthropological Institute (1921-1922). He was also awarded honorary degrees from the universities of Manchester and Cambridge in 1919. Rivers died of a strangulated hernia in the summer of 1922, shortly after being named as a Labour candidate for the 1922 general election. He had been taken ill suddenly in his rooms at St. John's on the evening of Friday 4th June, having sent his servant home to enjoy the summer festivities. By the time he was found in the morning, it was too late and he died in the Evelyn Nursing Home following an unsuccessful emergency operation. Rivers had an extravagant funeral at St. John's in accordance with his wishes as he was an expert on funeral rites. Sassoon was deeply saddened by the death of his father figure and his loss prompted him to write two poignant poems about the man he had grown to love: Poetry To A Very Wise Man I FIRES in the dark you build; tall quivering flames In the huge midnight forest of the unknown. Your soul is full of cities with dead names, And blind-faced, earth-bound gods of bronze and stone Whose priests and kings and lust-begotten lords Watch the procession of their thundering hosts, Or guard relentless fanes with flickering swords And wizardry of ghosts. II In a strange house I woke; heard overhead Hastily-thudding feet and a muffled scream... (Is death like that?) ... I quaked uncomforted, Striving to frame to-morrow in a dream Of woods and sliding pools and cloudless day. (You know how bees come into a twilight room From dazzling afternoon, then sail away Out of the curtained gloom.) III You understand my thoughts; though, when you think, You’re out beyond the boundaries of my brain. I’m but a bird at dawn that cries ‘chink, chink’— A garden-bird that warbles in the rain. And you’re the flying-man, the speck that steers A careful course far down the verge of day, Half-way across the world. Above the years You soar ... Is death so bad? ... I wish you’d say. And perhaps most poignant of all... Revisitation (W.H.R.R) What voice revisits me this night? What face To my heart’s room returns? From the perpetual silence where the grace Of human sainthood burns Hastes he once more to harmonise and heal? I know not. Only I feel His influence undiminished And his life’s work, in me and many, unfinished. O fathering friend and scientist of good, Who in solitude, one bygone summer’s day, And in the throes of bodily anguish, passed away From dream and conflict and research-lit lands Of ethnological learning, - even as you stood Selfless and ardent, resolute and gay, So in this hour, in strange survival stands Your ghost, whom I am powerless to repay. Lines omitted from final version of Revisitation Deep in my morning time he made his mark And still he comes uncalled to be my guide In devastated regions When the brain has lost its bearings in the dark And broken in it’s body’s pride In the long campaign to which it had sworn allegiance The Red Ribbon Dream In this poem, written by Robert Graves not long after Rivers' death, he touches on the peace and security he felt in Rivers' rooms: For that was the place where I longed to be And past all hope where the kind lamp shone. These were not the first poems to be written about Rivers. The following poem (written anonymously, although there is a reference that indicates that these lines were written by Charles Elliot Fox, missionary and ethnographer friend of Rivers) can be found in the Rivers collection of the Haddon archives at Cambridge: Anthropological Thoughts The Doctor took his book in hand His pen was in his finger His foot was on a foreign strand- But there I need not linger. "Now how," said he, "if I may ask About your cousin's mother Would she attempt the simple task Of speaking of your brother? Ah yes, just so, but if she were Your mother's uncle's sister How would your cousin's sister's aunt Address her when she kissed her? Yes that's a point I meant to add Your nephew's cousin's father If he an uncle's sister had (And neither of the two were mad) Would he respect her rather? But if your father's cousin's niece (His brother's cousin's mother) Were married to your father's son Would he be called your brother? Indeed, now this if it be so Is very interesting And really should not be I think The subject of your jesting. For if your father's mother's son Were nephew to your mother I really cannot understand Why she should call him brother." Alas, Alas, for just before The doctor's mind could grip her A shout of laughter issued from The Cabin of the Skipper. Others' Opinions of Rivers In Sassoon's autobiography (under the guise of 'The Memoirs of George Sherston') Rivers is one of the few characters to retain their original names. There is a whole chapter devoted to Rivers and he is immortalised by Sassoon as a near demi-god who saved his life and his soul. Sassoon wrote: Rivers was much loved and admired, not just by Sassoon. Bartlett wrote of his experiences of Rivers in one of his obituaries, as well as in many other articles (see 'References') as the man had a profound influence on his life: Other people have also spoken very highly of Rivers' personality, of his pioneering treatments and of the lasting impact he had on their lives. However, it seems that one must differentiate between 'pre-war' Rivers and 'post war' Rivers as he seems to have left very different impressions in these two periods: Pre-War (Walter Langdon-Brown on Rivers' early days at St. John's) (Arnold Bennett, a friend of Rivers, on Rivers' relationship with women) Post War (Sassoon in Sherston's Progress) (Sassoon in his diaries) (J.M Wilson on Sassoon's opinion) (Robert Graves on Rivers and his book Poetic Unreason) (Robert Graves in his autobiography Good-bye to All That) (Kingsley Martin in a diary entry two months after Rivers' death as he prepared for graduation) (Langdon-Brown on the influence of Rivers on psychotherapy) (T.G Platten, a student of Rivers) Rivers' legacy continues even today in the form of The Rivers Centre, which treats patients suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder using the same famously humane methods as Rivers had. Published Works * 'The Todas' Rivers (1906) * 'The Action of Drugs' Rivers (1908) * 'The Repression of War Experience' Rivers' Lancet Paper (1918) * 'Instinct and the Unconscious' Rivers (1920) * 'Medicine, Magic and Religion' Rivers (1923) * 'Conflict and Dream' Rivers (1923) * 'Social Organisation' Rivers (1924) In Fiction The life of W.H.R. Rivers and his encounter with Sassoon was fictionalised by Pat Barker in the Regeneration Trilogy, a series of three books including Regeneration (1991), The Eye in the Door (1993) and The Ghost Road (1995). The trilogy was greeted with considerable acclaim, with The Ghost Road being awarded the Booker Prize in the year of its publication. Regeneration was filmed in 1997 with Jonathan Pryce in the role of Rivers. References External Links * W.H.R Rivers A Founding Father Worth Remembering * 'Everything is Relatives: William Rivers' * Counter-Attack biography * The Rivers Centre * 'W H R Rivers and the hazards of interpretation' * Historicism * W.H.R Rivers (Richard Slobodin) Rivers, W.H.R. Rivers, W.H.R. Rivers, W.H.R. Rivers, W.H.R. es:William Rivers